I was asked today by a friend if he should buy a 16gb or 32gb KINDLE Fire HD . He said that he would be adding very few Apps to it but would on occasions like to rent a film or listen to music on SPOTIFY. He asked my opinion as to storage but I could not give him an intelligent answer as I didn't have one.
I said I thought that the memory stored the OS and the Apps but when it came to films and music I again didn't know if these were actually downloaded and stored on the Tablet or streamed each time you wanted to watch, for example, a film.
Thanks in advance for any replies.

16GB by the sounds of it - only worth getting the 32GB if they are going to fill it with videos and music.

I would recommend a Nexus 7 over a Kindle Fire HD, both a simular price but I think the Nexus is the better tablet.

The OS is stored in ROM, and is separate from the usable memory (RAM). Otherwise there wouldn't be much left!

The OS is stored on the onboard flash storage so 16GB isn't the amount of usable space as the OS takes up some of that.

According to Amazon


The actual RAM has nothing to do with the OPs question as both units have 1GB RAM.

Movies are either streamed to the tablet which requires a constant Internet connection or downloaded.

As the memory cannot be expanded with an SD card I'd say 32gb is better.He may find he needs the space later on.

This argument could be used for 64, 128, 256, 512... when do you stop?

At the end of the day if you are unlikely to be bothered by the 16GB limit (like me) then more storage just makes you lazier and not delete stuff once you have watched it.

how long can the person go before they can get to a PC to decent online connection to swap media in and out ?

This was kinda my point, for me I am able to swap my media often as I have a PC with broadband, I have a feeling this is now the norm.